I have read mixed reports about the incident at U.C. Davis, some stating that officers were breaking up a group “defending a tent city.” Little, however, leads me to conclude this particular group of seated students were themselves making any meaningful defense of a tent area so as to warrant this scale of force. Police outnumbered the seated group. Had they wanted to, officers could have easily gone around the students and proceeded to remove tents. So be it. The students would still have been within their right to assemble peacefully on public grounds. 

However, this officer, to my best judgment, was making an example of them. What was the lesson, unintended or not? “We will hurt peaceful dissenters.” It is the larger-scaled version of a parent slapping his child in the mouth for not shutting up, whether or not the parent is right. The difference of course is that Uncle Sam is not our father, and We the People have been known to slap back when things like this happen too much. Have we forgotten the American Revolution or 1960’s race riots? It is better to give public forum to adverse opinions. Truth can stand on its own legs if it is given room to fight.

Let us dispense with off-handed generalizations about those who protest. “Occupy kids”—”ingrates”—”bums”. None of these pejoratives are helpful in the discussion of human rights or the ideas in question. Even so, those sprayed were students training to be professionals in the middle and upper classes. Is higher education no longer a valid contribution to society, even when its intended end entails mutual benefit through higher productivity and increased well-being? Calling these protestors “bums” and saying they ought to be at work is mere rhetoric. Who that has an higher education would not consider schooling a legitimate vocation during its necessary duration? Everyone who endures graduate studies knows it is more difficult “work” than flipping burgers. But who they are is of little import. The validity of the ideas in question must be weighed without regard for who holds or condemns them, unless we prefer genetic fallacies to good reason.

Some people support the rough handling of protestors because, “they are young, self-entitled punks and we’re tired of their whining.” Such statements are awfully presumptuous of particular people’s motives and display frightening willingness to sacrifice sacred rights on the altar of personal annoyance. We cannot deny the right of one group without denying the collective freedom of all. We cannot cheer police to rough up one group without empowering them to rough us up, too, when the time comes to take a stand. Police exist to preserve that right, not to suppress it when the majority becomes tired of particular views.

Thought experiment: imagine the students in the video were in fact Christians protesting a government crackdown on freedom of religion. Assume the actions were all the same: a small group of Christians sitting peacefully in a public area, surrounded and maced by police. Would the tactics of the officers be acceptable then? If not, why is it different in the case of those in the video? It is because we have allowed bigotry to influence our judgment.

One does not have to respect the ideas for which another peacefully protests, but to disrespect his or her right to hold and profess those beliefs is to jeopardize the rights of all free-thinking people. There is good reason for the very first amendment to the Constitution being the right to hold and openly assemble to profess beliefs without fear of harm or legal consequence. Historically, societies which justify at any level repression of peaceful dissent in public forums, stand just a hair’s breadth from totalitarianism. 

Those who seek shelter from divergent opinions by hiding under the arm of ham-fisted governments may find themselves being pimped by that same political John of unlimited power. In such States, personal beliefs are determined not upon principle, but by the highest bidders and heaviest hands, and the welfare of individuals is something to be whored out. Those who look to government to legislate belief sell not only themselves, but society at large into bondage.

The masses do not generally accept change on the basis of principle, but only as a concession to the inevitable. They sail with the strongest wind. Everyone says, “change the world,” and when someone finally lifts a finger to do it, the rest pick up stones to stop him. As Dylan said, “everybody must get stoned.”

Remember, no one thinks himself under a dictatorship as long as he assents to the norms. Only when he differs does he learn the true limits of his freedom. The level of dissent which a government can peaceably tolerate determines the real quotient of freedom in a State. 

PS: You probably have no idea how powerful OC spray is. This level of indiscriminate spray can kill a person with asthma. The officer who sprayed the students was UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike: (530) 752-3989 - japikeiii@ucdavis.edu